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The education thinktankocracy has become bewitched by all those sexy innovations that dominate education policy discussions--charter schools, new compensation systems, etc.  The national preoccupation with those innovations is crowding out critical discussions of more hum-drum, but perhaps more effective, improvements to public education. That's the conclusion Russ Whitehurst draws in an important March 2009 essay.

For those of you who don't know, Whitehurst was the beleaguered director of the Institute of Education Sciences in the Bush administration. It seems he has spread his wings since becoming head of the Brookings Institution's Brown Center on Education Policy.

In his Brookings essay, Whitehurst draws an important distinction between flashy new innovations ("product innovations") and incremental improvements ("process innovations"):

Process innovation involves modifications of existing processes and procedures while product innovation is paradigm shifting. Getting teachers to better use quizzes to promote student learning is a process innovation whereas virtual schooling is a product innovation.

Product innovations are all good and well, he writes, but process innovations are at least as--and perhaps more--important:

We should continue to provide opportunities to incubate product innovation, e.g., by allowing charters to enter the market and operate with fewer strictures than traditional schools, by supporting virtual schools, by increasing our investments in instructional technology. But this should not distract us from the challenging, important, and unheralded task of making process improvements in the operation of traditional schools. After all, 95% of public schools in the nation are traditional rather than charters.

He goes on to cite important evidence contradicting some "product reformers'" claims that "it is impossible to improve traditional public schools." Large academic gains in big city schools are a testament to district-wide improvements in accountability systems, curricula and instruction, for example.

Whitehurst concludes with a call for greater R & D investment in process innovation:

Investing seriously in process innovation is a model for education reform that has not really been tried. Congress, the administration, major foundations, and organizations that advocate for public education need to support process innovation. We are unlikely to get dramatically better in educating students until we invest in engineering more efficient and effective tools and processes for carrying out the work of schools

Unfortunately, process innovation gets no respect these days. "it is hard to generate excitement around gradual improvement of work-a-day processes," Whitehurst writes. Funders seem particularly unimpressed, he argues, choosing instead to keep company with the cool kids and their glittering toys.

The relative obscurity of Whitehurst's article bears out his point. I can find only one mention of it in the blogosphere, and I would never have seen it at all if a friend hadn't sent it to me today.

That is unfortunate, because the article challenges the common and dangerous tendency to portray cool product innovations as the last great hope for urban youth. Skeptics often get a bad rap as the only thing standing between disadvantaged youth and a shining future.

In fact, Whitehurst reminds his readers, novelty and excitement don't necessarily translate into effectiveness: "Most education innovations...have not been evaluated or have not been evaluated with an approach that provides credible evidence. They may work. They may not. We do not know."

If, after all that hype, they don't work for urban schools, the public may abandon those schools as a lost cause. And that would be a tragedy. So let's hope promising product innovations don't blind us to the need to invest in the less glamorous processes that promote steady school improvement.